The 10 Cities With The Highest-Rated Doctors
New Yorkers, prepare to be surprised: The Big Apple is nowhere on ZocDoc's list of cities with the highest-rated doctors in the country. The offbeat city of Portland, Oregon, is ranked number one.
Patients who book appointments through ZocDoc are able to review their doctors online, and city rankings were calculated based on three criteria: wait time, bedside manner, and overall ranking. All doctors with at least 15 reviews were included, and some cities did better for certain kinds of doctors, as you can see on the map above. (Los Angeles has the highest-rated dentists.)
Here are the top 10 cities for patient satisfaction, ranked:
- Portland, Oregon
- Austin, Texas
- Boston, Massachusetts
- Seattle, Washington
- St. Louis, Missouri
- San Diego, California
- Chicago, Illinois
- San Francisco, California
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Los Angeles, California
While it's interesting to see where people seem to be most satisfied with their doctors, this data should not be taken as a ranking of which cities have the best doctors. Residents of certain cities may be easier to please than others, or simply more likely to give more stars in online reviews. The very same doctors might get better reviews if they moved to different cities and had different patients - it's impossible to tell.
In addition, a remarkably skilled doctor might be rude to patients and earn a lower rating, while someone who fumbles behind the scenes but charms patients could actually do quite well.
"Satisfaction rankings grade physicians on inappropriate metrics," argues William Sullivan, an attending physician in a Chicago, at KevinMD.com. "Bedside manner is an important part of patient care, but when patients come to an emergency department with an emergency condition, first and foremost they want a competent physician who delivers quality medical care."
Still, bedside manner is often a defining part of a patient's experience - and the doctors in Portland, Oregon seem to be doing something right.